I kept waiting for a brighter day to take pictures of my fabrics I made last week but the rain just kept coming. So last night, in some very bad lighting, I took pictures just so I could remember all the processes we covered.

     Some are really bad and not to be shown. I took it one layer too far or some of the colors bled into the other areas… but the fun of splashing all that color over a white piece of fabric was amazing. So here we go. I used a yard of fabric for each piece so that is a lot of dye and print paste.

 Soy wax resist using a large paint brush on cotton. The small tools to apply wax were in big demand so I went big. I was worried about washing it out when I had so much soy on there but it was easy after I soaked it in hot water.

More soy wax resist on linen. I ended up loving working on linen as it accepts the dye so well and wished I would have brought more of it.

Masking tape on a silk screen and then print paste with dyes applied through it . The big squeeze bottles full of color were so much fun. I felt like a kid in  the candy shop and I had been given ten bucks instead of a quarter to spend.

Dry brushing with the liquid dyes.

 Monoprinting on one of my small plexiglass pieces I brought.  This blue piece took me a long time and then I don’t enjoy the blue color.

 The orange piece above is just trying out different things to obtain texture.

This is a section of a large piece of fabric that I worked on for a few days waiting and batching in between processes. And then trying different marks on different areas. I think it has about five layers on it and I even worked it from the back. I was looking to obtain really saturated colors and now I know how. You can see from the close up how much bleed I was getting from the masking tape. I wouldn’t do such a rigid thing next time. I might go back to it and make the neon yellow lines a different color. Or cut it up and use it for something else. (But that’s the whole point of trying to make compositional cloth-it is the composition.)

It was very freeing to know that every fabric can be fixed WITH A BUCKET OF BLACK. And if you go into surface design with that approach, you smile a whole lot more when you pull your piece out of the final rinse and you don’t like it. I gave myself permission to be the newbie and just learn the techniques this time.

Two of the many things I will forever remember from Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan:

1. Stitch alone cannot fix a bad composition.
2. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” I love this phrase.

So back to work I am , stitching on a new piece and enjoying their phrases as I  try to make sense out of a piece I need to finish! They were great teachers and if you ever have a chance to take a class from them, sell a sewing machine if you need to and go.

Have a good weekend. I hope to enjoy some sun , soccer and the garden.

Be creative, my friends!

     What a great week at the Barn with fiber artists Claire Benn and Leslie Morgan. First of all, I want to tell you what excellent teachers these two are. Their enthusiasm for surface design and teaching skills  are truly gifts. I went with really no idea of how the class would be structured and what we would accomplish. Each morning a design technique was covered and generally in the afternoon and evening, we would work away or should I say play away.

     The wet studio is amazing. Large sinks, large print tables and we each had our own space-wet and dry with unlimited access to all the supplies.

     We learned about print paste, screen printing with the dyes, using unlimited amount of mark making tools, de-constructed screen printing, thermofax screens, freezer paper stencils, paper lamination, monoprinting, soy wax and lots of other things…So many techniques that I was overwhelmed and didn’t end up trying two of them.

     Some were old hands at the techniques and came for more of the design aspect of creating a compositional cloth and others like me were new to the techniques. There were several very talented artists. And it was a joy to watch them work. All of us played very hard and really didn’t let the weather hinder us. It rained the entire week so we couldn’t get our screens to dry for de-constructed printing. Getting things to dry and not bleed was a challenge as well with the high humidity.

     I met new friends from Canada and Australia. And got to spend time with an old friend . Dorothy Caldwell was in the upstairs studio with a full studio and we had 21 people in class. It was a busy place but never felt crowded.

   More tomorrow.

Be creative, my friends.